Store it here

Chicago's Clybourn Corridor is about to get a whole lot more crowded

The Clybourn Corridor is moving south and spilling farther onto side streets.

With the economic recovery entering its fourth year, at least among the affluent living nearby, the North Side retail district is about to get a slug of additional stores. Target Corp. is readying a big box at Division and Larrabee streets that would extend the corridor by more than a half-mile from its heart at North and Clybourn avenues, where Apple Inc. has a store. Also imminent: Nordstrom Rack, Dick's Sporting Goods, Mariano's Fresh Market, Williams-Sonoma, Anthropologie and Sephora as well as a 14-screen movie theater.

The expansion would accelerate the dramatic makeover of an area once dominated by the Cabrini-Green public housing towers and derelict industrial properties.

Though not as nationally recognizable as the Magnificent Mile, State Street or Oak Street, the Clybourn Corridor is viewed increasingly by retailers as a safe bet. “If you have a limited number of bullets, you're going to use them at North and Clybourn,” says Gregory Kirsch, a tenant broker at New York-based Newmark Grubb Knight Frank. “There's a flight to quality.”

If the area has an Achilles' heel, it is too much of a good thing: Traffic often backs up throughout the weekend as shoppers from outside the neighborhood and even the suburbs trek from one strip mall to another. Packing in more cars on streets that can't be expanded will only lengthen the backups.

The first of the new stores are set to open later this year. Deerfield-based CRM Properties Group Ltd. has leases with kitchen accessories seller Williams-Sonoma Inc. and Anthropologie, a women's apparel chain owned by Urban Outfitters Inc., for its site on Fremont Street, near Whole Foods' flagship store it completed in 2009 on Kingsbury Street.

The new Target is expected to be completed in 2013, though a Target spokeswoman declines to comment.

“Target by itself will generate more activity,” says John Melaniphy, president of Melaniphy & Associates Inc., a Chicago-based retail consulting firm. “This area is going to go gangbusters over the next five years, if the economy cooperates.”

The long-stalled New City YMCA mixed-use redevelopment, an 8.2-acre plot bordered by Clybourn and Halsted Street, also is moving along.

Chicago-based Structured Development LLC has a commitment from Milwaukee-based Roundy's Supermarkets Inc. to put an 80,000-square-foot Mariano's grocery store in a development that would include 360,000 square feet of retail space and nearly 300 apartment units. With money from former General Growth Properties Inc. CEO John Bucksbaum, the venture has avoided foreclosure and is close to finalizing leases for a Dick's Sporting Goods store and a 14-screen ArcLight Cinemas theater, sources say.

J. Michael Drew, a Structured principal, declines to comment on the leases but says construction would begin with 60 percent leasing. Paul Bryant, a principal at Oakbrook Terrace-based Mid-America Real Estate Corp. who is assisting Mr. Bucksbaum with New City leasing, also declines to comment on the leases but says construction could begin this year.

Mr. Bryant also represents Nordstrom Rack. He declines to comment on a lease of about 40,000 square feet that sources say is in the works for a site owned by Chicago-based Centrum Properties Inc. on Sheffield Avenue near Whole Foods. Centrum partner Sol Barket did not return phone calls, and a spokeswoman for Nordstrom Inc. says the Seattle-based company has nothing to announce.

In another development near Whole Foods, Structured has landed more retail tenants for its project on Kingsbury. Mr. Drew confirms new leases with running-apparel store Road Runner Sports Inc. and sandwich shop Jimmy John's Franchise LLC, joining Pet-Smart Inc. and Buy Buy Baby Inc., which are expected to open in October. Meantime, Barrington-based GK Development Inc. has a 6,000-square-foot lease with cosmetics chain Sephora on North Avenue near Restoration Hardware, President Garo Kholamian says.

“Retailers go where there's success,” Mr. Bryant says. “They know the volumes that are being done there, and they want to be around retailers like Apple and Whole Foods. There's certainly plenty of tenants looking at not a lot of available space.”

quote|John Melaniphy, president,Melaniphy & Associates Inc.

' This area is going to go gangbusters over the next five years, if the economy cooperates.'

Recommended for You

Sign up for newsletters

Morning 10

-

Need-to-know stories from Crain's and around the web. Monday-Friday at 7 a.m.

Today's Crain's

-

A roundup of the day's important business news. Monday-Friday around 3 p.m.

Breaking News Alerts

-

Up-to-the-minute info on what's happening in Chicago business right now.

Health Pulse Chicago

-

Your source for actionable, exclusive and inside news and data on the health care industry. Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 5:30 a.m.